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Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of President Donald Trump, is emerging as a potential choice to succeed his father on the Republican ticket in 2028, at least according to one poll.
Current vice president JD Vance would still appear to be the front running to take on the mantle for the GOP, pollster McLaughlin and Associates say. But the latest survey of voters in November shows his favorability has fallen to 34 percent, after consistently dropping for several months.
Meanwhile Trump Jr, the 47-year-old executive vice president of the Trump Organization, has seen his popularity steadily rise during the same period. Now just 10 points behind his friend, Trump Jr comes second on a list of 16 hypothetical candidates that includes Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
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Donald Trump Jr at the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July 2024 (AFP/Getty)
In August, the gap between them was 20 points, suggesting a steadily growing appetite for the prospect of the son stepping into his father’s shoes ahead of Vance, whom Don Jr recommended to the president in summer 2024 when he was choosing a new running mate.
An alternative poll shows voters significantly less impressed with the prospect of a Trump sequel. YouGov conducted a survey earlier in November that showed Vance with 42 percent against Trump Jr’s 13 percent.
So could Donald Trump Jr really be his father’s political successor?
Trump Jr has long been a favorite with the MAGA movement, always willing to pump up the crowds at Trump rallies, stand up for the administration on cable news, and attack Democrats on his Rumble podcast Triggered.
Having never served in public office, he is also relatively free of the Washington “swamp,” a major turn-off for Trump’s “America First” supporters, so could offer a fresh spin on the family brand.
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Don Jr with his late mother Ivana Trump at a New York City gala in 2013 (Getty)
The eldest Trump heir was born on New Year’s Eve 1977 to the real estate magnate and his first wife Ivana Trump, a Czech immigrant to the United States.
Trump Jr has two younger siblings, Ivanka and Eric, and two half-siblings from his father’s later marriages, Tiffany and Barron. Unlike his brothers and sisters, he discovered an early love for the great outdoors and spent his boyhood summers hunting and fishing in his late mother’s homeland under the guidance of his grandfather Milos Zelnicek.
He was educated at the exclusive Buckley School in Manhattan’s Upper East Side before attending The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and then at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, from which he graduated in 2000 with an economics degree.
Trump Jr was reportedly estranged from his father for around a year, aged 12, when his parents divorced. He spent a year bartending in affluent Aspen, Colorado, after graduating, but has otherwise remained a Trump through-and-through.
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Don Jr and his siblings attend their father’s second inauguration ceremony at the Capitol Rotunda on January 20 this year (Getty)
He joined the family business after his wilderness year and worked on a number of the Trump Organization’s biggest Big Apple luxury property projects, also serving as a regular guest on his father’s hit NBC reality show The Apprentice from 2006 to 2015.
Trump Jr was married to Vanessa Haydon from 2005 to 2018, with whom he has five children including Kai Trump.
He was subsequently involved in a long-term relationship with Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality and now U.S. Ambassador to Greece, and has since dated Florida socialite Bettina Anderson.
As soon as Trump Sr announced his first tilt at the presidency, his son embraced MAGA with enthusiasm – and quickly ran into trouble.
Not long after his father’s shock victory, it emerged that he, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort had all attended a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Veselnitskaya was offering “dirt” on rival Hillary Clinton, a key motivating factor behind FBI special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Kremlin links to the Trump machine.
On social media, Trump Jr is often as vocal and blunt as his father. He compared Syrian refugees entering America to poisoned Skittles in a 2016 Twitter post and promoted conspiracy theories concerning everything from George Soros to alleged Democrat “coverups” of Joe Biden’s health problems.
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Don Jr and Eric Trump celebrate a $1.5 billion partnership between their cryptocurrency arm World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma (Getty)
He earned himself a brief ban from the platform during the pandemic for retweeting a video promoting hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19 and went on to controversially suggest, without evidence, that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine had been withheld until after the 2020 presidential election to prevent his father winning a second term.
He was a vocal exponent of MAGA’s “Stop the Steal” message in the aftermath of that election and spoke in Washington on January 6 2021 just prior to the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
More recent examples of his output include Trump Jr posting an AI image of his father attempting to look seductive in all-denim in a parody of Sydney Sweeney’s infamous jeans commercial, a meme of the president lobbing a sex toy at female basketball players, and his joining in conservative outrage over Cracker Barrel changing its logo.
With any primary years away, it remains to be seen if Trump Jr will put his name forward. But
“He’s probably the best embodiment of the take-no-crap attitude of the Republican Party,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican political strategist.
In March this year he furiously shot down a story that claimed he was seriously considering a run for president in 2028, attacking the sources it was based on and pointing to his support of Vance.
However, when asked about his ambitions at the Qatar Economic Forum in May, he did not rule it out.
“That calling is there,” the businessman said. “It’s an honour to be asked and an honour to see that some people are OK with it… Maybe one day.”